Washingtonpost.com has caused a several-day dustup with this essay, in which a woman decries the intelligence of women. Curious about any article that can draw 1,000 comments and 10,000 related blog posts (like this one), Roadguy checked it out. Here’s the part that’s transportation-related:

Women really are worse drivers than men… A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men’s 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women. The only good news was that women tended to take fewer driving risks than men, so their crashes were only a third as likely to be fatal. Those statistics were reinforced by a study released by the University of London in January showing that women and gay men perform more poorly than heterosexual men at tasks involving navigation and spatial awareness, both crucial to good driving.

Roadguy’s eyebrow went up a few notches. When evaluating groups of drivers, for example, which one is “worse” — the one with the higher crash rate, or the one with the (much) higher fatality rate? And when you’re calculating accidents per mile, isn’t the total of miles driven by either group irrelevant? Also, Roadguy also knows many women and several gay guys who drive a lot and always seem to find their way home.

This all seems to relate to our earlier discussion of “boy” and “girl” directions, and it raises new questions — such as should gender continue to be a factor in car insurance rates? Share your thoughtfully worded comments below.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 6:05 am and is filed under Links, Main, Transportation conversations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.